James, do you like your life?
Can you find release?
And will you ever change?
Will you ever write your masterpiece?
Are you still in school
Living up to expectations, James?
You were so relied upon
Everybody knows how hard you tried
Hey, just look at what a job you’ve done
Carrying the weight of family pride
James, you’ve been well behaved
You’ve been working hard
But will you always stay
Someone else’s dream of who you are?
Do what’s good for you
Or you’re not good for anybody, James
— Billy Joel, James

Following the dream someone else established for you is the surest path to the quiet desperation that Henry David Thoreau wrote about in Walden. We must eventually break free of those expectations and follow our own path to find ourselves. For some of us, it comes years after school and many rungs up a few too many ladders in a career of figuring out why this thing or that didn’t quite resonate for us the way we thought it would when we stepped onto it. For me, the writing was always the thing I should have done but for the things I thought I had to do.

Billy Joel has been on a heavy rotation on the playlist lately, and his question to old school friends seems to pop up frequently. Will you ever write your masterpiece? Will you always stay someone else’s dream of who you are? Tough questions, but the thing is, the answer reveals itself over time.

Most of us grow out of other people’s expectations eventually. Most of us work to master something important to us, even if it’s a hobby. I speak to people who light up when they talk about their garden or hiking the same mountains over and over again or playing pickleball—whatever—and the joyfulness of the pursuit to mastery is obvious.

Will I ever write my masterpiece? Who knows? But we find the things that work for us and pursue them with a focus that only love of the pursuit derives. At some point, it doesn’t matter what other people’s expectations are, only that we are doing what we love to do in the time that we have. That’s how to live a life.